We got a chance to spend 20 minutes behind the wheel of the Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric car, with Volvo's Lennart Stegland in the passenger seat. He's the president and director of Volvo's special vehicles group.
Silent start and idle creep
The car we drove was fully fitted out, unlike one driven more than a year ago by Popular Mechanics editor Andrew English, which had only one of the two pieces of its battery pack installed--and a bad wheel bearing beside.
Starting the car, or booting it up, occurs in dead silence. There's no chime or tone to indicate that the vehicle is "awake" and ready to roll. Like the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the C30 DRIVe is fitted with simulated idle-creep, so lifting off the brake causes it to move forward.
That's a distinctly North American preference, Stegland agrees, and European drivers may prefer the car to behave as a manual-transmission car would, staying put until the accelerator is depressed.
Moving away from standstill, a whine from the electric motor increases in volume. It's barely audible at low speeds, but by 40 mph it's noticeable, though not intrusive. It signifies little more than that the car is a prototype. Chevy Volt engineers, for instance, eliminated audible motor whine entirely between pre-production prototype and salable car.
Read More: http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1051992_2010-la-auto-show-volvo-c30-drive-electric-first-drive-report
Volvo Dealers
